Page 59 of Break Me
He knows she’s in bed and she won’t ever leave. It’s not exactly a hard thing to guess at, but what it matters right now, I don’t know.
I swallow down the lump in my throat and nod, unsure of what to say.
He watches me a second longer, unspeaking. Then he turns and starts to walk away.
“Let’s go,” he says when he doesn’t hear me following him. Reluctantly, I do, wondering if I’m going to regret wanting to get to know the real Benji.
* * *
He drivesus out of the city, turning down a road that seems to be full of nothing but dead grass. There are no houses, no stores, nothing for a ten-minute stretch in which we don’t speak. We haven’t spoken at all since we got in the Range Rover.
Finally, I see a brick building up ahead. It’s pretty big and reminds me of an apartment complex, but there’s only the one building. There’s an expansive parking lot behind it, and Benji pulls in. I try to read the sign out front, but the letters are faded.
“What is this?” I ask quietly, taking it in. I see two people in what looks like scrubs out front the main entrance, smoking, as we drive to the parking lot.
Benji doesn’t answer my question. He pulls around back, puts the SUV in Park, and then glances over at me.
“Remember,” he says, his voice low, “you wanted to see this.” Then he gets out and walks around the car, opening my door without looking at me.
I hop out and he shuts the door then locks the car. I follow behind him through the parking lot, orange and red leaves crunching under my grey boots. My stomach growls but I cough, trying to mask the sound.
We never did eat that brunch.
Benji walks around the building, to the main entrance. The people in scrubs are gone but cigarette smoke still lingers in the air.
Benji pulls the glass door open and waits for me to enter. We walk through another set of doors, and I see there’s an electric fireplace, a big TV mounted on the wall, and a few chairs and couches around a table currently full of cards. To my left, there’s what looks like a receptionist’s counter.
Benji nods in the grey-haired woman’s direction and she gives him a nod back, a smile on her face at the sight of him.
If she only knew he was a dick.
Maybe she does know.
The people around the table in the makeshift living room are older, save for one guy who looks like he might be in his thirties. He’s in a wheelchair, his hands folded on his lap, and his eyes look blank.
But Benji doesn’t give me much time to digest all of this. He grabs my hand and tugs me down the hall straight ahead. I see numbers posted on the wall, with arrows indicating which rooms are where.
Benji doesn’t glance at that, he just turns right when we reach an intersection. I smell disinfectant, and this place looks and feels like a hospital of some sort. I see some of the doors lining the hall are cracked open and people are in little cots watching television or sleeping. Some have IVs hooked up to their arms, and some have nurses in scrubs inside, tending to them.
“Who are we going to see?” I ask Benji quietly, taking it all in, eyes darting around this beige and white hall.
Benji doesn’t answer me.
But we come to a stop outside of a closed door, room 156 the placard reads. There’s a small pane of glass in the door, like there is in all the others, but I can’t see much from this angle.
He lets go of my hand, and without knocking, he pulls down the lever and pushes open the door.
Cautiously, I follow him in.
Is this going to be a family member? Is his mother dying, too? Have I been a bitch for no reason at all?
I wrap my arms around myself, unsure what the hell is going on.
Benji closes the door behind me, then steps into the small room. I sweep my gaze over everything: the white tile floor, the blinds that are closed, a small TV on a tall armoire pushed in a corner. A bench with clean white shoes beneath it beside the armoire. And then across from the TV, a man in a hospital-type bed, small, with white sheets. Benji steps close to the guy, reaches down beside the bed, toward the wall, and does something I can’t see, then steps back, watching the man carefully, coming to stand at the foot of the bed.
The man is gaunt, but aside from the hollowness of his eyes and his thin skin, he doesn’t look like he’s much older than Benji. He has dark hair, his eyes are closed like he’s sleeping, and his mouth is wide open.
And he has…a feeding tube down his nose.
